Says Microsoft

Jan 7, 2010 08:09 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft is indicating that Windows 7 is nothing short of a smashing commercial success. And yet, while the Redmond company is indeed sharing a few statistics with the public, it isn’t really sharing those that count more, namely the actual number of Windows 7 licenses sold to customers, or at least those shipped into the channel. At the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft Chief Executive Office Steve Ballmer noted that it was a combination of the work done by over 3,000 Microsoft engineers along with feedback from more than 8 million Beta testers that helped make Windows 7 what it was. In 2009, the software giant noted that Windows 7 had out-sold Windows Vista by 234%, comparing sales figures after launch.

At CES 2010, Ballmer revealed that Windows 7 was the fastest selling operating system in history, by far. According to the company’s CEO, the latest iteration of Windows also helped boost computer sales, as the number of PCs sold in the week of Windows 7’s launch exploded by 50%.

“Windows 7 is being well received all around. We saw strong demand for Windows 7 through the holidays – Year-over-Year PC unit sales increased over 50% for each of the 4 weeks of December according to NPD’s Weekly Tracking Service. This is on the heels of a strong start to the holiday season, where NPD reported that PC sales increased 63% Year-over-Year on Black Friday 2009,” revealed Brandon LeBlanc, Windows Communications manager on the Windows Client Communications Team.

According to data provided by internet metrics company Net Application, Windows 7 had grown to a market share of 5.71% in just two months after launch. Just to help you get an idea, that’s a third is all the market share that Windows Vista grabbed in approximately three years, albeit Vista’s user base is withering and is now down to just 17.87%, with Windows XP also dropping to 67.77% from 70.48% ahead of the Windows 7 GA. The 5.71% market share would roughly translate into some 60 million copies of Windows 7 in use around the world, but this is my estimate and not an officially confirmed number from Microsoft.

“Netbooks were one of the hot items where Windows 7 has been strong. According IDC’s recent survey and its resulting paper “Mininotebooks: the New PC Phenomena” (which was sponsored by Microsoft), more than 99% of the netbooks sold today in the US (95% worldwide) now run Windows. And just 2 months after launch, more than half of those netbooks are running Windows 7. Of course it’s only natural to also want to know how Windows 7 did in comparison to its predecessor,” LeBlanc added.

According to Ballmer, Windows 7 will continue to drag the PC market along with it. Market analysis outfit Gartner has corrected PC sales forecasts, revealing that it expects a growth of 3% instead of the previously announced drop of 2% for 2009. At the same time, Gartner forecasted a boost of 12% in PC sales in 2010.